Evaluation of Genetic Diversity in Sugar Beet Half-Sib Inbred Lines under Farm Water Stress Condition

This study was conducted to evaluate the genetic diversity of sugar beet half sib inbred lines (48 lines and one control cultivar) under water stress (200mm of class A evaporation pan) in field conditions in a randomized complete block design with three replicates in Khorasan Razavi Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center in 2015. In this research, traits such as root yield, raw sugar yield, sugar content of root, leaf number, index of difference between the temperature of environment and leaf, succulence index, leaf relative water content, specific leaf weight, leaf color score, leaf growth score, leaf architecture, root growth score and ratio of length to width of root were measured. Results showed that there were significant differences (p≤0.01) between studied genotypes for all traits. Results showed that, there were significant positive correlations between root yield and sugar yield, leaf color score and root growth score, while, significant and negative correlations were observed between root yield, leaf number and ratio of length to width of root. The dendrogram generated from the cluster analysis for sugar yield classified genotypes into four main groups. Factor analysis led to introduction of four main factors which explained 73.2 percent of total variation. Hf4 s1 genotype showed superiority for root yield, sugar yield and leaf color score than other studied genotypes, indicating that, this genotype has a high potential for drought tolerance.